Far too many companies are more concerned about pushing their products than cultivating long-term customer relationships. They’d rather design, build, and promote the latest “thing” – but all the while, they forget that actual humans will be using what they build.
For example, we recently tested out a brand new online budgeting software. It had a great design, fancy features, drag-and-drop functionality to categorize all your transactions – and was backed by some of the most credible people in the financial industry. The only problem was… it didn’t do what we needed it to do.
We couldn’t look at our projected revenue or expenses. It was confusing to delete or re-categorize transactions if you made a mistake. And there were virtually no reporting tools (graphs, charts, etc.).
It was clear that this company didn’t consider the needs of their users. They merely pushed a product onto the market as soon as they could. And unfortunately, it’s their clients who end up suffering as a result (we actually cancelled the service within a couple weeks of purchasing it).
The lesson is simply this: Don’t skimp on your users in order to get the latest product out the door. If anything, invite them into the process of building your product or service. Ask them what features they’d like. Do enough user testing to find glitches, missing functionality, or confusing language. And make it easy for people to give feedback – especially for new product offerings.
At the end of the day, your customers will thank you far more if you give them a helpful, easy-to-use product or service – even if they have to wait a few extra weeks to get their hands on it.